Progressive Labor Party on Race & Racism

Progressive Labor Party (PLP) fights to destroy capitalism and the dictatorship of the capitalist class. We organize workers, soldiers and youth into a revolutionary movement for communism.

Only the dictatorship of the working class — communism — can provide a lasting solution to the disaster that is today’s world for billions of people. This cannot be done through electoral politics, but requires a revolutionary movement and a mass Red Army led by PLP.

Worldwide capitalism, in its relentless drive for profit, inevitably leads to war, fascism, poverty, disease, starvation and environmental destruction. The capitalist class, through its state power — governments, armies, police, schools and culture — maintains a dictatorship over the world’s workers. The capitalist dictatorship supports, and is supported by, the anti-working-class ideologies of racism, sexism, nationalism, individualism and religion.

While the bosses and their mouthpieces claim “communism is dead,” capitalism is the real failure for billions worldwide. Capitalism returned to Russia and China because socialism retained many aspects of the profit system, like wages and privileges. Russia and China did not establish communism.

Communism means working collectively to build a worker-run society. We will abolish work for wages, money and profits. Everyone will share in society’s benefits and burdens.

Communism means abolishing racism and the concept of “race.” Capitalism uses racism to super-exploit black, Latino, Asian and indigenous workers, and to divide the entire working class.

Communism means abolishing the special oppression of women — sexism — and divisive gender roles created by the class society.

Communism means abolishing nations and nationalism. One international working class, one world, one Party.

Communism means that the minds of millions of workers must become free from religion’s false promises, unscientific thinking and poisonous ideology. Communism will triumph when the masses of workers can use the science of dialectical materialism to understand, analyze and change the world to meet their needs and aspirations.

Communism means the Party leads every aspect of society. For this to work, millions of workers — eventually everyone — must become communist organizers. Join Us!

NEW YORK CITY, September 7 – One hundred and fifty members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union brought the message of international working-class solidarity to the NYC Labor Day Parade. Comrades from Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were active in the contingent, pushing the demonstration to the left by attacking the capitalist system. The weakness of this march was its unquestioning acceptance of the Democrats and liberal bosses. President Trumps deportation machine was developed by the presidents before him, going back to the Clinton era. A workers’ movement that does not attack both political parties and bosses has no fighting chance to change the world. Although the union remains weakened by the poisonous politics of liberalism and nationalism,

David Koch, one half of the toxic Charles/David Koch billionaire brothers, died on August 23. The Koch brothers have been leaders of the domestic small fascist bosses challenging the big fascists who have historically run U.S. imperialism.These two wings of the ruling class are killers rushing towards a battle that will result in increasing fascism. Trusting either of them to liberate our class is a dead-end. Building confidence in our class by building a revolutionary communist movement to put the working class in power is the only way forward in the face of growing fascism.

David Koch, one half of the toxic Charles/David Koch billionaire brothers, died on August 23. The Koch brothers have been leaders of the domestic small fascist bosses challenging the big fascists who have historically run U.S. imperialism.These two wings of the ruling class are killers rushing towards a battle that will result in increasing fascism. Trusting either of them to liberate our class is a dead-end. Building confidence in our class by building a revolutionary communist movement to put the working class in power is the only way forward in the face of growing fascism.

Climate catastrophies, including recent forest fires and hurricanes, have energized students and others in the fight against climate change. Capitalism causes nature’s disastrous events because its profit-seeking goals preclude meeting , or even acknowledging, social needs. The most important step forward for the growing climate movement, therefore, is for the working class to mobilize a revolutionary communist party, Progressive Labor Party(PLP) that will lead the struggle to conquer capitalist power.

NEW YORK CITY, September 9— A part-time history instructor at the City University of New York (CUNY) offers a description of “back to school” first days. “Where does the anti-racist club meet? I want to join!” Two days in class and students are already showing a great interest in fighting back as well as an openness to communist ideas. Ten students signed up to join our Activist Club, 30 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed and students have been engaging in sharp and lively discussions about the history of the United States and the kind of future we want.

Haiti, September 10– As a new school year begins across the northern hemisphere, ruling classes across the globe herd working class teachers and students back to classrooms and school systems designed to reproduce capitalist social relations: racism, exploitation, and poverty. Communist teachers, parents and students are faced with a dual task: battle like hell now for immediate improvements in learning conditions while never losing sight of the larger fight for communist revolution.

Last year in Mexico’s presidential election Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (aka AMLO) came to power in Mexico). He rode a wave of massive discontent with the previous president Enrique Pena Nieto. Also, he promised an end to official corruption which he calls Mexico’s IV transformation. The other three, he argued, were the War of Independence (1810-1821), the War of Reform (1858-1861) and the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917). The following is a report on the reality of this so-called transformation.

Words of praise poured in for the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison when she died on August 5, 2019. She was lauded for her mastery of language, the depth of her characterizations, and her profound understanding of the lived consequences of sexism and racism. She was also celebrated as a national treasure. As the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy K. Smith wrote, “I don’t believe there is a writer who understood America better and loved it with more ferocity than Toni Morrison.” There is no doubt that Morrison was not a radical, but a liberal, and that her heavy reliance on psychoanalysis to explain her characters’ behavior fails to target the roots of their systemic oppression in the coercive power relations generated by capitalism.

Guerrero, MEXICO—A massive demonstration on September 26 will commemorate the struggle for the return of the 43 students who disappeared in Ayotzinapa five years ago. The details of this incident, part of the criminal history of the capitalist system against the working class, have never been been revealed. Communists in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) believe that as long as the capitalists are in power, they will continue to use state violence and criminal gangs to assassinate and disappear the students and workers who fight back. The only way to confront the bosses’ violence is to organize our class for communist revolution!

On August 5, 38,000 paramilitary troops from India entered the “semi-autonomous” area of Kashmir, an open act of imperialist occupation. They were acting on orders from hyper-nationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his fascist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). This is just the latest in a string of vicious attacks conducted by the BJP, which has dramatically ramped up anti-Muslim racism in the country. Recently it threatened to strip citizenship status from nearly four million workers in the Indian state of Assam, and deport them to Bangladesh (Slate, 8/9).In service to the Indian capitalist ruling class, Modi and the BJP are desperately trying to consolidate control over resource-rich Kashmir at the expense of capitalist rivals in Pakistan and China. They have been emboldened by the tacit support of imperialists in the U.S. and European Union, who share an interest in slowing the advance of Chinese imperialism.